Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image processing system, an image processing apparatus, a storage medium or carrier medium, and an image capturing system, and more particularly to an image processing system, an image processing apparatus, a storage medium or carrier medium, and an image capturing system that synthesizes a plurality of image sequences, each image sequence composed of a plurality of partial images.
Background Art
Conventionally, one image capturing device (e.g., camera) employing a lens having a given angle of view captures images for a plurality of times, and stitches the captured images to generate a wide-angle image having the angle of view greater than the angle of view of the one image capturing device. Further, a plurality of camera units capture images at the same time, and stitch the captured images to generate a wide-angle image having the angle of view greater than the angle of view of the one image capturing device. For example, hemispherical photography camera system is known. By using the hemispherical photography camera system, a hemispherical photographed image, which is an all-around direction image, can be captured. Since the hemispherical photographed image cannot be captured by one-time image shooting using a wide angle lens, images are captured for a plurality of times by one camera or images are captured by using a plurality of cameras at the same time, and then stitched to generate the hemispherical photographed image.
The images can be stitched by applying a pattern matching to an overlapping portion between the captured images, in which a position of a captured object is detected, and the images are stitched based on the detected position. Conventionally, the image stitching technologies are developed mainly for still images. Although some image stitching technologies are developed for movie images, the image stitching is performed by assuming each of frame images captured at the same point in time as a still image.
When the above mentioned conventional image stitching technologies are applied to movie images (i.e., a time series of sequential images), an object may be seen as discontinued images in the movie image between the frames composing the movie image. For example, when the movie image is replayed, an object at the stitching portion may be seen as a discontinuing image in the movie image composed of synthesis frame images, with which quality of movie image deteriorates.
JP-2006-135386-A discloses the image stitching technologies for movie images that can generate one panorama movie image from movie images captured by a plurality of cameras at high speed. Specifically, a positional deviation between a pluralities of partial images is computed for the beginning frame, and a positional deviation between the previous frame and the post frame is computed for the next and subsequent frames to compute positional deviations between a pluralities of synthesis images of the movie images at high speed. Although the positional deviations between the plurality of synthesis images of the movie images is computed based on the frame-to-frame relationship in appearance, the positional deviation is computed for each of the plurality of frames separately, and thereby the frame-to-frame positional relationship of an object (e.g., smooth movement of object from one frame to another frame) may not be set effectively for the movie images.